While a growing number of foreign banks are jumping on the Internet banking bandwagon in China, local banks' leadership in the lucrative market looks hardly shakable in the near future.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China's largest commercial bank and the number provider of e-banking services, continued to see turnover of online transactions surging this year after a few years of expansive growth.

The bank said yesterday online turnover totalled 17 trillion yuan (US$2 trillion) in the first five months of this year, up 27.3 percent from the same period last year.

While online turnover totalled only 15.4 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion) in 2000, when the bank first launched its online banking platform, the figure became a staggering 38 trillion yuan (US$4.6 trillion) last year.

The number of corporate online clients now stands at 176,000 while there are now 12 million individual online customers registered.

"We aim to increase the number of our individual clients to 20 million by the end of next year, when online banking will play a bigger role in the bank's development," said Zhou Yonglin, marketing director of ICBC's E-banking Department.

Although the bank was a relative latecomer in the e-banking market, it has managed to secure a leading position largely on the back of a broad customer base, particularly in the cities, information technology capacities and aggressive efforts to promote the business.

In June 1996, the Bank of China was the first Chinese bank to launch online banking services, only eight months after the business was initiated by a bank in the United States.

A survey of more than 20,000 Internet users by consulting firm Shanghai iResearch Co Ltd earlier this year found that 95.8 percent of the respondents knew about the ICBC's online brand.

Just over 60 percent of them said they knew about online banking at China Merchants Bank, which ranked second in terms of brand popularity.

ICBC's online services are used regularly by 77 percent of the respondents, the survey showed, while 11.6 percent of them said they used China Merchant Bank's e-banking platform frequently.

Foreign banks, however, are only just getting started in the business, although Internet banking is widely seen as a major way for them to penetrate the local market, where they do not have networks and funding resources like their Chinese competitors.

Just under 2 percent of respondents said they used Citibank's online services, compared with 89.4 percent for ICBC.

But the situation may change soon. More than 10 foreign banks, including Citibank and HSBC, have launched Internet banking in China, while a few more are seeking regulatory approval.

"The era of real tough competition between foreign and local banks is yet to come for Internet banking in China," said Zhou.

"We are lucky to have the head start, but we very much cherish the advantage we have now." Foreign banks are still barred from providing local currency services to individual Chinese customers. The restriction is due to be lifted at the end of next year as part of China's World Trade Organization commitments.

(China Daily June 30, 2005)